Spirit Ascendancy (9 page)

“Y’all don’t know how lucky you are that I can no longer obsess over my wardrobe choices,” he said. “You’d be long gone and I’d be here when the Necromancers busted in, still weighing the pros and cons of cashmere versus a cotton blend.”

“Yeah, we dodged a bullet on that one,” Savvy said with a grin. Hannah giggled.

“Right, then,” Lucida said, surveying our ragtag group. “You’ve got everything?”

“I think so,” Savvy said. “We didn’t have much to begin with.”

Lucida’s phone buzzed dully against her palm, and she answered it. “Give me the good news,” she said, by way of greeting whoever was on the other end. She listened a moment, then said, “On our way.” She pocketed the phone and turned back to us. “This is it. Keep with me. I’ll tell you a bit more about where we’re going once we’re safely into the car.”

“Who’s meeting us?” I asked.

“Never you mind. A friend,” Lucida snapped. “And he’s here, so let’s scarper.” She looked out the window to the end of the alleyway and sighed. “Grey four door Volvo. Blimey, can’t he ever pick anything with a little get-up-and-go? I’ll look like a mum at after-school pick up driving that thing. Ah, well.” She twitched the curtain shut again and crossed the room in a single fluid bound. “Keep your eyes open for anything dodgy.”

We filed through the door of Lyle’s flat with all of its wacky, teetering piles of royal memorabilia. I wondered, with a vaguely guilty squirm, what would happen to it all; his sad life’s obsession, most likely the future contents of the nearest available dumpster. I’d never really found out what had happened to Lyle, so desperate to return to his den of carefully stacked delusions, but I felt sure that his continued absence meant that he must have Crossed when Hannah had opened the Gateway to save me.  I remember thinking, as I pulled the door shut, that it was depressing as hell.

And hell, in apparent reply, broke loose.

Every light in the stairwell went out at once, plunging us into utter darkness.

“Go back!” Lucida shouted. “Get back in the flat, now!”

The end of her warning was lost in the sudden echoing cacophony of footsteps that seemed to come from every direction at once; it was impossible to tell how many sets of them there were, but it sounded like an army’s worth. Deep, harsh voices were shouting unfamiliar words and phrases that I couldn’t understand, but nonetheless recognized from their lilt as some form of Gaelic. Then the darkness filled with horrible cries and shouts and moans that rent the air, assaulting my eardrums as a thousand spirits flooded the stairwell. Their energy and emotions pressed in on all sides, creating a wild, bewildering chaos. I couldn’t see. I couldn’t think. I could barely breathe.

In blind panic, I spun on the spot and started sprinting for the door to the flat, but my way was blocked by strong, grasping arms that yanked and tore at my jacket as they tried to get a hold of me. I swung out violently with my right arm and heard a gasp of pain as my knuckles collided with a skull. I threw another one of them off as I swung my left hand which clutched a large, heavy bag of shoes. I heard more grunts as a body tumbled past me and down the stairs, knocking into my leg and nearly pulling me with it, but I found the railing as I lurched forward and barely managed to steady myself.

Another hand closed around my wrist, but as I struggled against it, Finn’s voice called over the tumult. “It’s me! Hold on to me! We need to get out of this stairwell!”

We began to descend the stairs, feeling our way blindly, thrashing and kicking out against human and ghost alike, not a clue who we were striking.

 Another hand had grabbed at my hair. I clawed at it, and heard, “Ouch! Jess? It’s me!”

“Savvy?”

“Yes!”

“Hold on to me! We’re getting out of here!”

We fought our way step by step down to the landing. Finn stopped abruptly, and we fell back as the scuffling sounds of a fight broke out. A foot connected with my shoulder and I stumbled back into Savvy, sending us both crashing into the wall. I cracked the back of my head on the corner of the railing and saw stars for a moment before scrambling to my feet again. Finn was shouting.

“Annabelle, it’s okay, it’s me, it’s Finn! Give me the fire extinguisher!”

I heard Annabelle sobbing hysterically, “He fell over the railing!” Something heavy and metal clunked to the floor. More scuffling had broken out on the stairs just below us. Lucida was swearing and grunting as she fought off more of the attackers, and then there was a terrible sound of thumping and cracking as one or all of them tumbled to the ground below.

“Hold on to me,” Finn was saying to Annabelle. “Stay with me, we’re going down.”

Somewhere below us, amidst the din, Milo was yelling something incoherent and Hannah was screaming.

“Hannah!” I called.

“Jess! Where are you? Help me!”

I couldn’t even begin to find her. She was just another voice among the discord.

 “Hannah!” I cried again into the chaos. “Finn, we have to get to her!”

“I know! Her voice is coming from down there! Keep moving!” he shouted back at me.

I couldn’t hear myself think; the ghosts in the stairwell were bombarding us with an absolute tempest of sound and sensation. It was all I could do to clutch tightly to Finn and Savvy as we struggled forward and fought the urge to pass out from the insanity of it all.

Finally, our feet found the bottom of the stairs. Finn began sliding along the wall until his hand reached what he was looking for: the light switch. The sudden return of the light was blinding, and we all squinted against it. Three forms were crumpled at the base of the stairwell. One of the men was stirring feebly, clutching his ribs. Another was trying to stem the flow of blood gushing from a laceration on his heavily tattooed head. And the third was Lucida.

Everything stopped in a frozen moment of disbelief. I looked down at Lucida, her eyes glassy and staring, one of her legs bent at the strangest angle, her signature stiletto heel dangling from her foot.

Her lifeless foot.

A sudden cry broke the hideous spell. Finn was already pulling us forward as, ahead of us, Hannah was disappearing through the door at the end of the hallway, screaming bloody murder and flailing like a captured animal between two large, tattooed men. The moment they crossed the threshold, the deafening spirit attack ceased, leaving the air hollow and empty around us.

We raced through the door and burst into the alleyway outside. At the end of it, the Necromancers were attempting to force Hannah into the back of a large black van. Milo was flying at them, through them, using every bit of strength he could muster to stop them.

“Let go of her! Get the hell away from her right now!” he was screeching, causing the door of the van to slide nearly shut before one of the Necromancers could catch it with his elbow and force it open again. Another tore back his sleeve, revealing something inked onto his wrist. He muttered something we couldn’t hear as we pelted toward them, but suddenly Milo reeled away from the van as though it had been instantly warded against him. He gently floated to a stop and hung in the air, motionless and silent.

“There she is! There’s the other one!”

Two more Necromancers had rounded the corner of the building and began running at us. Finn skidded to a stop so quickly that Savvy, Annabelle, and I slammed into him. He stood there for a moment, his eyes darting back and forth between me and Hannah, bouncing on the balls of his feet. I watched the decision form on his face, saw him nod to himself. Then he turned his back on Hannah and looked at us, his eyes blazing with determination.

“No.”

I knew what it meant, and I couldn’t let him do it. I wouldn’t let him do it.

“Run. Now. This way,” he ordered, and yanked us in the opposite direction.

“No, Finn, wait! Hannah! We have to get Hannah!” I screamed, as he pulled me away from her. “Hannah!”

But it was too late. Hannah was already vanishing, still kicking and screaming for all she was worth, into the yawning black mouth of the van. With a resounding slam, the door slid shut, and the van peeled away. From the gap in the alley behind where it was parked, three more Necromancers emerged, and gave chase.

We were running for all we were worth toward the grey Volvo parked at the end of the alley, its hazards flashing yellow patches onto the surrounding brick. It was empty, and the driver’s side door was standing open, waiting for us. The Necromancers were gaining on us, five of them now, closing the gap as they sprinted in our direction.

Finn reached the car first, wrenching the passenger side door open and shoving me unceremoniously through it. Savvy and Annabelle piled in practically on top of me as Finn ran around to the driver’s side and jumped in, foot to the gas before the door had even properly closed behind him. The tires screeched as he peeled out into the street amid blaring horns and pedestrians running for cover.

“Finn, what are you… you’re going the wrong way!” I cried, craning around in my seat. “They took her that way!”

“We’re not following them,” Finn said, taking the corner like a maniac, veering dangerously into oncoming traffic in his haste to put as much extra distance between us and our pursuers as possible.

“We have to follow them! They have Hannah! Turn around, Finn!”

“No!”

“We have to go back! We have to go back right now!” I cried, choking on a rising sob.

“We can’t! We can’t go back there, Jess, I’m sorry!”

“Let me out! Let me out of this fucking car right now!” I shouted, pulling in vain on the door handle.

“That door must be safety locked,” he said, sounding almost relieved. “You can pull on it all you want, but it’s not going to open.”

I ignored him, yanking the handle even harder, pressing against the door with my foot, battering the window with my fists. “Stop the car, Finn!”

“No.”

“We have to go back!”

“If we go back, we’re dead! Do you understand me? Did you see what they did to Lucida? That will be us if we go back there. Now stop acting like a lunatic and let me drive!”

I lunged at him. I wanted to hurt him. I wanted to rip that goddamned curtain of hair back from his face so he would look at me. My fingernails scrabbled for his face, but Savvy and Annabelle grabbed me by the arms and pulled me back.

Annabelle was shouting, “Jess, he’s right, we can’t—”

“Don’t you tell me that! Don’t tell me we can’t go back there! That is my sister! They have my sister, do you understand that?”

“Yes, I do.”

I wrenched my arms out of their grasps and flew at him again, this time succeeding in clutching a fistful of his jacket and tugging, so that he twisted dangerously in his seat and the car began to swerve. Swearing loudly, he regained control of the wheel and wrenched himself out of my grip by shrugging out of his coat.

“We just barely got out of there alive and now you’re trying to kill us?” he shouted. “Let go of me and sit down!”

Savvy threw off her own seatbelt, muscled me back into my seat, and sat on top of me, pinning me into place. I struggled against her, but couldn’t throw her off. Instead, I continued to shout.

“They have my sister! Why, Finn? Why the hell did you let them take her?”

“Jess, stop it!” Savvy yelled.

“Don’t say that to him, it’s not fair!” Annabelle said.

“I didn’t let them take her! No one let them take her! I couldn’t get to her, but I could get to you, so I got you out.”

“You should have let them take me instead!”

“They didn’t want to take you!” Finn said. “Don’t you understand? If they’d gotten their hands on you, you’d be dead right now.”

“But Hannah—”

“They aren’t going to kill Hannah! They want her alive, Jessica! Don’t you see? She’s the valuable one! She’s the one who can do what they’ve always wanted to do, and reverse the Gateway! They aren’t going to let anything happen to her, she’s much, much too important to their endgame. But you? Don’t you remember what the prophecy says? You are the dangerous one, from their point of view. You are the one who could ruin everything by standing in their way. If they had gotten away with both of you, only one of you would still be alive right now, and it sure as hell wouldn’t be you. They need her. They need her to carry out their plans, and they won’t let anything happen to her, not now, anyway. If I could only get one of you out of there, it had to be you.”

The argument I longed to scream at him got lost on the way to my lips and came out instead as an incoherent sob. My body slackened and fell back against the seat, and Savvy, looking intensely relieved, slid off of me and back into her own place, yanking her seatbelt across her heaving shoulders.

“What are they going to do to her?” I choked out. “She’s so fragile, Finn. What the hell are they going to do to her? She won’t be able to handle it.”

“Jessica, listen to me,” Annabelle said, in such a commanding tone that I had no choice but to turn and comply. “They aren’t going to hurt her, at least not too much. You heard what Finn said: they need her. They need her to cooperate, and they need her powers to be at their strongest, and neither of those things can happen if they hurt her.”

“She’s tougher than she looks, that little spitfire,” Savvy said. “She’s been through a lot, but that makes her stronger, not weaker. She’ll hold her own till we can find her and get her back, you can bet on it. But did anyone see what they did to Milo?”

Her question pulled me out of my sobs enough to look around the car. “Where is he? Did he go with them?” A tiny burgeoning hope popped into being in my heart. If Milo was with her, Hannah might just be okay.

“No,” Savvy said. “He was still just floating in the alley after the van pulled away.”

“I remember now,” I said, wiping my eyes with my sleeve and fighting to control the shuddering of my own breath. “I think they performed some kind of casting on him to keep him at bay. It was like he was unconscious or something, just hanging there.”

“What can we do? Is there any way that we can bring him into the car?” Annabelle asked.

“I told you, I’m not going back to—” Finn growled.

“No, I’m not talking about going back,” she said impatiently. “I mean, using your connection to him, Jess. You’re Bound together, right? Is there anything you can do to get him here?”